


WHY THE HELL DID I WRITE THIS

by apiphile



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 2012 is the year of write whatever the fuck i want, Blood, Don't Read This, Dubious Consent, Ergi, Id Fic, Incest, Just don't, M/M, Oh Dear, PWP, Pseudo-Incest, actually it both sucks and blows, blood blood blood, blood everywhere, broken ribs, buttfucking, dub-con, for god's sake what's wrong with me, google it, haematophilia, healing cock, i wasn't even going to post this because it blows, i'm serious he is actually so that's technically an act of worship or something, it always sucks to be my favourite character, it says so in norse mythology, it's okay he's the god of getting done up the butt, just why the fuck did i write this, no, no literal healing cock i actually mean that, porn without even a semblance of a plot, that mostly amounts to a lot of blood kink fics, the writing on this fic is the absolute worst, this is the most idiotic Id fic ever, thor is a big dumb golden retriever, why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-07 01:52:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/425597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In case you couldn't be bothered to wade through my histrionic tags: PWP. NO SEMBLANCE OF PLOT WHATSOEVER. Nothing makes any sense except possibly the concept of healing cock being linked to Loki being in Norse Mythology the god of "Ergi" or passive male homosexuality. And also cross-dressing, although that part's less relevant. </p>
<p>WARNING, CAN VERY EASILY BE READ AS DUB-CON, AND INVOLVES A LOT OF BAD MEDICAL PRACTICE AND BLOOD AND PSEUDO-INCEST</p>
            </blockquote>





	WHY THE HELL DID I WRITE THIS

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar/gifts), [LizaPod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizaPod/gifts), [abbichicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/gifts).



Thor lays Mjolnir aside, panting.

"Do not attack your brother while he sleeps, Loki, for Mjolnir has keen ears."

Loki lies in a crumpled lump of flesh and bones and pants with a whistle in his breath. Thor has smashed two of his teeth, though he remembers trying to aim away from his pretty face.

“I wasn't. Attacking. Anyone."

 

"Get up," Thor commands, ignoring this. Anyone coming into the bedchamber of the god of thunder while he sleeps gets what he deserves.

"I would dearly love to," Loki wheezes, beginning to raise an arm and lowering it again with a twist of his lips. "But I am afraid that won't be possible for a few hours if not days."

"Enough shamming," Thor says, reaching down against his better instinct to lift Loki by his underarms, as he had when they were children.

"THOR NO," Loki shouts, slapping at him with a shriek and curling into a half-ball with a whimper.

Thor steps back and tugs his beard in thought, as he has learned from his father this means of concentration

"You cannot be so greatly injured. I made sure to be gentle once I knew it was you."

"I can feel the ends of my rib cage sticking into my lung," Loki says in the same low and steady voice he has previously used to say _Thor, that went through my leg_ and _Thor, that is not a horse._

Thor crouches beside him. "Are you sure?"

"I am also sure," Loki continues in a pained voice, his face screwed into the picture of misery, "about the fractured shin, and the blood which is about to go into my mouth."

Thor examines his brother's face carefully for signs of trickery. The problem with Loki is that if there are signs of trickery, he is not tricking, and if there are no signs then he is probably planning to, and ... Thor's head hurts thinking about it. But a bright-red tendril of blood runs swift as a spring river from his nose to his lip as Thor watches.

Thor bows his head. "Please accept my apologies for these grievous wounds."

“No," Loki says crossly, twitching his arm and sighing heavily as another spasm of pain passes across his face.

 

Not heeding this, nor the real possibility that his brother might bite him like an injured dog, Thor wipes the blood form Loki's lip with the ball of his thumb.

"That will make no difference to the rib sticking into my lung," Loki says evenly. Thor finds his eyes are being followed by Loki's wherever he turns; his brother has a talent for making one feel guilt-stricken even when one _hasn't_ done a terrible thing.

"I am no healer," Thor admits, examining him awkwardly for signs of injury. There are many: Thor is strong and Mjolnir is enchanted.

He lays a hand on Loki's breast, just in case he has healing powers no one has ever told him of.

Loki hisses through his teeth and utters an oath which near turns the air blue; Thor withdraws his hand hastily.

"How am I to help you?" Thor asks eventually. He has no love of circumstances which allow him no immediate solution in action.

"Think you've done. Ow. enough."

"Let me mend what I have broken."

"Thor unless you've become a student of healing arts in the last few minutes you cannot." Loki sighs, and winces. Thor decides this conversation might go better if he lies down beside his brother, and does so.

Loki does not trouble himself asking what Thor is doing, which Thor takes to be a sign that he is doing the right thing.

He rests his head upon his brother's shoulder, and gazes mournfully. "Will you not forgive me?"

Loki tries without success to shove him away: he cannot move his arms without disturbing his chest, and even headbutting at Thor must cause him pain for he winces and recoils and winces again. "I fear you have mistaken me - ow - for some other brother of yours - ow - to whom forgiveness is an option. Ow. Ow. Perhaps you are thinking of Balder."

Thor says, "You shall not rid yourself of me until I am forgiven."

"I shan't rid myself of you regardless as I am _crippled_ here in _your_ chambers."

"You shall come to no further harm," Thor assures him, reaching to wipe away a fresh gout of blood.

"Only if you stop trying to _help_ me is that likely."

"How many times must I say I am sorry for this ... excess, brother?"

Loki bends his head away from Thor's with another grimace. "Always one more."

Thor kisses him on the side of his head - he can scarce object - and pats him on the opposite cheek. "Have courage, the pain cannot be much."

The withering scorn of Loki's expression is no less effective when viewed this close.

"Have _you_ ever had your body smashed by an enchanted hammer?"

"I do not believe so."

"Then talk not to me of pain, Thor."

Thor says, "When we believed you dead, that was a pain worse than a thousand hammer blows."

"Oh _get off me_."

"No," Thor says, and forgetting Loki's ribs he embraces his brother and once more kisses his cheek, fraught with the memory of his disappearance and presumed death.

"GET OFF ME THOR," Loki shrieks, and he yanks his head away; somewhere in this abrupt movement his head collides with Thor's - Thor has been told this hurts a great deal and Loki himself has been very eloquent on the matter of precisely how thick Thor's skull is - and then his mouth.

Thor, who is the scourge of many a maidenhood, as all warriors should be (though of course never without that the maiden did not offer herself up gladly), kisses as instinctively as a brave horse kicks at a creeping wolf.

Loki does not struggle, although for what feels like a lifetime he also does not reciprocate. Thor is also used to this - some maidens are shy - and continues until there is an answering movement in Loki's lips.

When at last Thor recalls that he is not kissing a willing maiden but instead he has somehow - no doubt through some trickery of Loki's - come to be sharing breath with a treacherous Jotun on the floor of his chambers, he untangles their mouths.

Loki says nothing, but watches him with eyes that Thor has known but never understood.

After a while Loki says, "And is that supposed to help?"

His words are cold but his voice is warm. On the whole, Thor thinks, it is possible that it _did_ help. He kisses him again.

Loki grows limp. This will help, Thor thinks: if he does not struggle, if he remains at peace, his body will heal the better. So there is profit to it, and it is incumbent (a word Loki taught him) upon him to continue kissing his brother.

It is for the good of his health.

It is hardly his fault, Thor thinks as he feels the stirrings of passion in his blood, if Loki's passivity here excites him. It is the way of a woman, who being captured must give herself up gladly and without a fight, eager to be consumed.

He does not utter these thoughts in the presence of the Lady Sif any more since she punched him the length of the dining hall, but he has told Loki, and often, in the times when he was deep in his cups.

When Thor finds he can no longer breathe (and realises with a guilty start that Loki can also no doubt no longer breathe) he pulls back again, with some reluctance. Though Loki look like a drowned cat and fight like a half-drowned one, he is when cooperative the most excellent partner in mischief, adventure, dancing, and now it seems _kissing_ that any man could ask for.

"Are you content?" Thor asks. Loki's hair has crept like a shadow across his face, and he pulls it away that he might better determine the state of his brother's mind. At present he seems in great pain, which is not the end to which Thor has been working.

"You broke my ribs," Loki says in petulant disbelief, "why in the nine realms and the unfathomable void - _ow_ \- would I be content?"

Thor says, "Discontent will not heal you faster."

Loki says, "I do not recall the moment when you became a Healer, Odinson."

"Well," Thor says, as another dark tendril of Loki's hair steals across his face and is put back into place, "you have the breath yet to complain." But he has no head for Loki's irritation - he should never have come to Thor's chamber unannounced, did he think he was _invisible_? - and in his quest to end it he kisses Loki again. It at least renders him still and silent.

He might as well, he knows, put his hand over Loki's mouth for quiet, but this traditionally has made him struggle, and kissing it seems keeps him still.

Almost still: Loki's hand, which Thor has an unpleasantly clear memory of hitting with a glancing blow of his hammer hard enough to turn it momentarily blue, rests upon Thor's forearm as Thor lifts Loki's head, and his thumb rubs back and forth along the exposed skin.

Thor understands that it is perhaps not the healer's way to hold the patient's head in both hands and kiss him as if he is trying to suck poison from him, but as Loki has helpfully reminded him lest he somehow forget, Thor is not a healer.

He is almost shocked - though not enough to stop - by pressure upon the back of his own head; Thor however knows his brother's hand well enough. He has taken it running, held it hiding, and pressed it to his breast in oath through all his childhood years. Now it is against his head, pushing weakly their mouths together, Thor knows it too.

The taste of blood does not alarm him.

It is not until the hand upon his forearm tightens its grip that he remembers what it is to taste blood in the mouth of a broken-chested creature: something must be within the lung.

Thor makes to remove himself from the kiss but Loki opens his mouth wider and Thor, instead of stopping as he had intended, lends the hand that is not supporting Loki's head to the business of opening the clothes in which he is dressed.

It is to better examine his ribs, Thor thinks. It seems followish now to think Loki came to attack; he wears no armour, nor even the robes of office. He is only clad in the nightclothes that Thor wears, and Thor feels the unfamiliar but sour feel of guilt within his breast.

The hand upon his forearm loosens again and resumes stroking with the gentle touch of a mother holding her babe in arms. Thor has never known such tenderness from Loki in his action, only - and long ago - in his voice.

Thor takes his cue from the softness of touch and with only the very tips of his fingers feels for the fracture in Loki's ribs. E'en so, the hand on his arm tightens convulsively and the mouth beneath his slackens and groans.

Thor is no healer, but as his fingers attest, there is not a bone in his ribcage that remains whole.

Loki's fingers dig into his forearm deeply enough that Thor feels his hand growing numb: he pulls his arm away from the lumps and bumps of shattered ribs and the pressure relents. Loki tries to pull his head back from the kiss, but with Thor's hand upon his skull there is little he can do to escape it.

Thor ends this kiss on his own time. He turns his head to look at what he has uncovered - Loki's thumb moves tenderly across his wrist once more - and is almost impressed to see that his brother's torso is black, purple, and blue with the vast angry thundercloud of an enormous bruise. The last time he saw Loki so abused he had been caught by the hoof of their father's mount.

He remembers that: they were much younger, and Thor had been both stricken with concern - Loki has always seemed frail to he who is as strong as a mountain - and with horror at his own instinct, which was to lick the wound like a dog.

He waits for the recrimination or the sarcasm in his ear - it is close to Loki's mouth - but hears only a soft exhalation as of one on the brink of death, and a very faint, _don't stop_.

Thor is sure he has imagined it, but on the off-chance that he has not, he presses his lips to Loki's again and draws from him the blood-tainted air.

The soft hand upon Thor's forearm pushes downward almost imperceptibly.

Thor does not touch his ribs again - there is a very insistent part of him that would like him to, but he will not compound the damage he has done, now - though he allows the path of his hand to be guided by Loki. Perhaps he is guided in more than this; Thor loses the thought as his fingertips fall to the hair that greets Loki's navel.

Loki's hips push very, very slightly towards his hand: this movement is followed immediately by a gulp of pain that falls into Thor's mouth. It would be better if Loki did not move at all, but Thor is sure that whatever the outcome neither of them have the patience for such a thing.

The hand on his arm presses again, and Thor tastes more blood upon his tongue as he kisses. The timbre of Loki's breathing is so uneven as to make fear run under his thoughts like a river under the ground. It is blood, and not saliva, that swirls about Thor's tongue as he runs his fingers through the hair of Loki's groin.

Thor's is coarse and gold as the hair upon his head; Loki's is the same soft and - though he cannot see he is sure - black upon his head. It is far finer to touch than even the down of the migrating bird, and now both of Thor's hands entwine in hair, and tug, just a little.

Loki makes a sound that Thor cannot identify. It sounds like a word; he hopes the word is _please_ and not _stop_ , for he does not believe that stopping will grant him pardon from what he has begun. And indeed, Loki's thumb has quickened its pace as his shallow breaths quicken theirs 'gainst Thor's mouth.

Thus encouraged, Thor places his hand upon the organ Sif is rumoured to flee (he does not believe she is _flannfluga_ , but he can understand why those unused to a woman wielding a spear might believe it).

Loki moves his hips to greet Thor's hand, and pushes down with his own hand firmly enough that Thor can feel it now; he also mutters and brings upon blood into their joined mouths.

This will not do. Thor pulls his mouth from Loki's - something wet trails between them and slides over Loki's lip, but proximity will not allow identification - and says, "You must lie still."

Loki does not reply. Thor watches his face, and finds Loki watching him; he thinks he sees a flush of pink in his skin, which is rare but to his knowledge a sign of health. Perhaps it is not a sign of health in Jotunn, but while Loki wears the guise of an Asgardian Thor will treat him as one.

"Loki," Thor says, and his voice does not sound like his own, "you _must_ lie still."

With a weak smile his brother says, "Make me."

Thor might, he knows, remove his hand and refuse to give any succour to Loki until he behaves, but for some reason his hand is as disobedient as his brother, and clutches at his organ of sex. It fits Thor's hand as comfortably and warmly as the shaft of Mjolnir.

_Please_ murmurs Loki, and Thor is sure he is not imagining it this time; then again, when he looks his brother in the eye Loki only raises his eyebrows enquiringly. There is blood on his lips, and blood, red as any Asgardian's, in a smear from his lip to his chin.

"Make you?" Thor asks, and Loki pushes up against his hand again. There is constriction of his throat not long afterward, and a fresh dribble of blood drops from between his lips. As Loki makes no move to remove it - perhaps he cannot - and Thor is still supporting his head, he kisses it away.

He pulls back as soon as he can make himself, which is not very soon.

"Make you?" he repeats. "I will not hurt you further."

"You're hurting me _now_."

"How --?" Thor begins, but he is not so very obtuse as Loki assumes. He rubs his thumb over the tip of Loki's sex organ as Loki's thumb rubs over his arm, and the whole of his brother's body twitches.

There is another soft rain of blood over Loki's chin.

"This does not make you _still_."

Loki says, "I am not a statue, Thor."

"Shall I bind you here and leave you until you are well enough to untie yourself?" Thor asks. He means it to be a threat, or a promise; Loki has proven infuriatingly adept at escaping every bond, every prison set for him. As boys it was impossible to contain him but for when he wished to be contained.

"You'll have to move me to bind me," Loki points out with what would be relish were it not so subdued.

Thor decides that after several months of his brother behaving like a cackling lunatic it is both a relief and a source of paranoia to find him so quiet. Perhaps breaking him to pieces occasionally does him some good: it is not for a warrior to know the nature of a magician's madness.

"Then how am I to _make you_ remain still for the good of your own body?" Thor growls in frustration. He lays his face against Loki's shoulder: the smell of blood and sweat is very strong, and it rouses the battle within. "You are the great strategist, the great thinker. Tell me."

"I have no answers," Loki says softly, in his ear (ever since his betrayal people have said "says Loki softly in my ear" when they mean they have been tempted or lied to; Thor does not like this, but he cannot find the words to explain why it grieves him). "My body betrays me. Treat it as you would a traitor."

Thor believes he already _has_ , and that Loki presumes too much that there is one way to treat a traitor. After all, the way in which he has treated this particular traitor has been against the wishes of most.

He takes his hand from Loki's head, and his head drops back. There is blood in his nostrils.

He takes his hand from Loki's sex organ, and Loki scowls and whimpers; he takes Loki's insistent hand from his wrist, and while there is protest and clutching there is little Loki can do to prevent him. Thor is strong, Loki is weak. Things are in their rightful place.

Thor gathers Loki's wrists between one hand and, without warning him, jerks both arms up above his head as if Loki were capable of surrender.

His brother roars with pain and brings up several mouthfuls of blood; Thor sees his chest shift and heave, and when it settles - though there are tears in Loki's eyes - the shape seems less deformed.

He kicks out, too, and Thor locks a leg around his as tightly as a rope.

"I do not," Thor says, breathing harder than perhaps he might expect after so little exertion, "have to move you so very _much_ to bind you."

"Ow," says Loki in a very faint voice. He is pale and he is bloody, and the battlefield within Thor grows louder.

"I don't know what it is you're trying to fool me into doing," Thor admits, "but I will make you suffer for it, whatever it is."

"Yes," Loki agrees, bloody-mouthed and breathing in short shallow bursts.

Thor is sure he means to keep his leg locked about Loki's and Loki's hands stretched above his head, but he is dealing with a serpent and so perhaps it is not a surprise to find his hold slips, and that his knee falls between Loki's legs. And so he is no longer pinioning his legs together, but rather forcing them apart.

Loki puts up very little fight. But then, how can he? He is a bruise spitting blood and pleading eyes atop a thin body. There is little he can do.

The internal battlefield surges.

He experiences his own bodily treachery now, but he knows this must in some way be a trick of his brother's. Still he burrows between his brother's thighs, as his brother's words burrow so often into his mind, and still he hears the broken breaths of Loki rattling in his own blood.

"Ow," Loki says more pointedly, and without thinking Thor picks him up and turns him on his face.

It occurs to him only _after_ he has done this that to leave the weight of Loki's body pressing upon his broken ribs is to undo his good work, but by now Loki has braced himself on his shaking arms, and is weakly cursing Thor for a bully and a fool.

Thor knows himself to be no bully; he will concede "fool" on occasion, but it is most often Loki who fools him thus and therefore Loki has made himself this bed to lie in.

"OW," Loki roars, burying his bloody face in his forearms as he struggles to his elbows and knees. Thor can see now the wreckage of his lower legs.

He is quite helpless.

Thor's body betrays him once more at this thought; his sex organ is stupid and cannot tell the difference between helpless women and helpless Loki. Perhaps because Loki is so little of a man.

The place he ruts with women when he wants them not to bear - which is often, Thor wants no train of bastards making a claim to his time - is one of the parts men and women hold in common. Thor pushes away the remains of Loki's night-clothes and seizes him by the hips.

He can ascribe neither to imagination nor to knowledge the sensation that Loki leans back into his hands; the same must be said of the arch of his back as Thor, meaning to assure him of no ill-will, bends to kiss the skin where back and legs meet, above the cleaving of his body.

He cannot but acknowledge, however, that when he presses the two fingers of his right hand into the hot, tight-fitting place beneath and feels Loki's body clench around him, that Loki hisses and whimpers.

_Please_ , he hears, or believes that he hears.

"Did you speak?" he asks, parting Loki's legs - they shake as if carrying a great burden - with his left hand. He keeps his right fingers sheathed within, and the feeling excites his sex organ. It cannot tell, Thor thinks, it knows no better.

"I said _you are hurting me_ ," Loki says peevishly, his mouth muffled by his own arms and the blood that fills it - the floor of Thor's chamber grows ever more like the slaughterhouse - and he wheezes like an old man. "But when has that ever mattered?"

"It has always mattered," Thor says crossly. He wants little else now but to bury himself within, as far as his body will take him. Loki is an unsteady place to rest: his legs and arms are weak, his chest broken, his blood deserting him. Thor finds to his surprise that it makes him feel rather more affection than seeing Loki walking about unharmed.

"No, please," Loki says with sarcasm so heavy it might tear through the floor of the world, "take your pleasure."

Thor scowls and removes his hand: Loki makes a plaintive sound in the back of his throat and rocks back on his hips after him. Thor runs his hand over Loki's spine and even against the evident pain from his chest his brother's back rises to his hand like the Midgardian feline.

" _My_ pleasure only?" Thor says aloud, meaning to address the remark to himself alone. "I think not."

"SHUT UP," Loki says so loudly that it echoes from the walls of the room. A second later he coughs, contracts, and retches up a goodly flood of bloody _fluid_ upon his own arms.

Thor is perhaps a little unsettled that this in no way diminishes his desire. If anything -- but no.

He braces himself against his brother's thighs and without hesitation or thought of wrongdoing Thor's body is within Loki's, and Loki's two-part sound of satisfaction is unmistakeable. There is a "hn" and an "ahh".

"Oh," Thor says, bent double over his brother's body, because in no other coupling has he felt so much as if he were being consumed by some great and terrible fire from the moment he went within.

Loki, though bleeding and broken and, on last count, also weeping involuntarily from the terrible pain, pushes back against Thor like a horse eager to back into her stable.

Thor kisses the broken lump at the back of Loki's rib cage, where the shifting bone does not quite break the skin, and Loki sobs and hisses.

_You are my brother and I love you_ , Thor thinks woozily, running a hand over the fractured forest of Loki's ribs as he pushes deeper inside him. It is strange - he acknowledges only later - that his thoughts turn to kindness and affection only in moments when Loki is abject and weeping.

Loki meanwhile covers his head with his hands, the weight of his heaving body supported only by his elbows, and even above the thunder of the blood through his own head Thor can hear the wet sounds of more blood falling upon the stone floor.

"Ow," Loki says almost under his breath, but Thor hears in the echo a much more enticing _Please_ , too.

Thor thrusts. He is used to women who lie still so he will not break them, and women who groan and wiggle and sigh, and women who are tense, and women who are limp, and women who ask for his love and women who swear their own. He is not used to feeling his balls slap against another set of balls.

It is not unpleasant. Thor would be surprised, but his mind is busy.

Thor lays a hand in Loki's hair. It is wet with sweat, but he knots his fingers through it until his hand is safe-anchored, and he could swear he feels Loki tug his head downward. Most of what Thor feels, however, is hot and damp and dark about the organ of his sex, and it is squeezing all other thoughts from his head.

With an especially firm thrust, Thor tugs back on Loki's hair until his neck curves back over his shoulder. It must take the air from him as surely as a blow to the stomach, and as Thor pushes again (his hips move like hammer blows: he has always been proud of their might) he hears Loki gurgling as he chokes on his own blood.

"OW - please, Thor, I can't - OW --"

Thor hunches over Loki. His own thighs tremble now, holding him in such a position without crashing down upon his brother and crushing him. He sinks his teeth into the back of Loki's neck, and feels him writhe and stutter.

He opens his eyes again as he releases Loki's nape, but not his hair, and sees his brother's hands clutching futilely at the smooth, blood-slippery floor. It drives his hips, and puts a fire in the base of his spine. He wants, and he _wants_.

Thor thinks he must be careful not to slip or he will crack Loki's face against the floor: somewhere in the execution of this thought, as he straightens but keeps _rutting_ , the command is twisted, and he uses his handful of Loki's soft-dark hair (dark as the raven's wing or the night in which Loki belongs) to smack his face into the stone floor.

Loki is fast - Loki has always been fast - and he protects his head with his arms, curling up so that Thor's blow only cracks his elbows to the floor and throws them both momentarily off-balance. Thor steadies himself and almost slips out - a prospect which fills him with undue horror - and Loki's defensive manoeuvre compresses his ribcage and leaves him choking and spattering himself and the floor with yet more blood.

_My dear brother_ , Thor thinks, clutching at his hip and pushing back inside him hard enough to send them both skidding forward over the blood-wet floor. _With your red arms and red mask_

Thor knows that he is close to spent when his skin is hot and his legs shake almost as much as Loki's. Loki pushes back as hard as Thor pushes forward; they meet as doors closing. Loki's body is warm and welcoming, his legs - though shaking - spread like open arms calling forth to an embrace, and Thor buries himself at their middle with a possessive pride.

Even over his own breath, which is loud and raucous as a feasting hall, and over his own heart, which booms and races like a mounted army's charge, Thor can hear the cries of Loki. They are dampened by his mouthfuls of blood and saliva - more saliva now than blood - and rendered wheezing by the improper function of his lungs, but they are loud enough. He hears the gasps and the groans which are of throat and stomach; he has never heard a woman make a chorus like it.

He hears hisses and gurgles and bitten-off cries of pain.

And he hears his own name.

When at last he reaches his end Thor feels as if something has been taken from him; he cannot be sure what it is, but there is an absence he was not aware of before. He falls back from Loki - careful still not to crush him - and lies panting on the fouled floor. He cannot help but smile.

Loki, meanwhile, staggers to his feet, and, naked as the day he was born (Thor assumes Jotunn are no more born clothed than Asgardians or Midgardians), bloody to the elbows and with a face like the mask of violent death, nods thoughtfully. He seems now unmoved, implaccable.

"That ..." Loki says, feeling his chest - the bruise has faded entirely, and the lumps and bumps are gone - with both hands, "... seems to have done the trick."


End file.
